


BBQ

by FrenchTwistResistance



Category: Chilling Adventures of Sabrina (TV 2018)
Genre: F/F, I just want caos to be a sitcom where hot middle-aged ladies kiss
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-05
Updated: 2019-08-05
Packaged: 2020-07-31 15:28:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,187
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20117338
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FrenchTwistResistance/pseuds/FrenchTwistResistance
Summary: It’s an end-of-the-school-year party,and some lessons must be learned the hard way.





	BBQ

**Author's Note:**

> Kind of a prompt from the group chat. Nobody else would write Grilling Dad Hilda, so I had to do it myself.

The thing they never tell you about drinking beer in the summer is that anyway you slice it—whether canned or bottled or in plastic cupfulls tapped out of a keg—you have to drink it fast before it gets hot and flat and disgusting. Especially if you’re the one doing the grilling. The proximity to the propane—or ideally charcoal—heats the beer exponentially, even if it’s supposed to be safely chilled in a complimentary Greendale Hardware and Wholesale Liquor koozie. 

Some lessons must be learned the hard way.

xxx

It’s an end-of-the-school-year party.

Sabrina’s initial reasoning had been that her aunties possessed the most acreage, and besides that, if anyone brought any illicit substances—Satan forbid—they could magic up a protection spell to keep any idiots on the property until they sobered up to save anyone from driving inebriated and endangering innocent lives.

Ambrose had been on board from second one, backing up any ludicrous idea Sabrina proposed so that maybe he could see some faces that weren’t the only faces he’d seen in fifty years.

Sabrina is impulsive and ridiculous, but she’s also smart and strategic. She starts the conversation—tentatively at first—in mid-February.

When June finally rolls around, Zelda and Hilda both have capitulated. 

And by then it has turned into an end-of-the-school-year party for the majority of Greendale.

Ambrose has conjured a swimming pool.

Sabrina has curated the perfect playlist for the Bluetooth speaker fairy lights she bought online. (Of course, this playlist streams from Zelda’s phone because that’s the phone that’s called and texted the least—so fewer interruptions to the “bops,” as Sabrina calls them. [Zelda’s only recently upgraded from a flip phone because it was cheap and also because it had become too infuriating receiving texts that were mostly just empty rectangular boxes that Hilda and Sabrina insisted were supposed to be visual representations of emotions somehow.])

Zelda is patrolling the partygoers. 

Hilda is grilling.

It’s a party. 

There’s food and mood lighting and music. And people who kind of know each other but don’t exactly fit.

Half of Greendale is dancing and mingling and munching at the fruit and vegetable spread—which all the Spellmans had assembled both together and separately from offerings culled from Hilda’s garden and Hilda’s greenhouse and the grocery store’s produce section—on the picnic table.

xxx

Hilda’s on beer two as the first round of vegetarian hotdogs and all-beef hamburgers and seafood kebabs are ready to be plated. She’s completely lucid but just a tad more talkative. She could, in her current state, definitely accurately shoot a clay pigeon with a 12 gauge, as she’s discussing with Harvey’s brother. Zelda has a penchant for both explicit and implicit contact sports, so Hilda knows the rules for shooting sports. If you’re about to compete with a gun, it’s deemed an unfair advantage if you’ve got a little liquor in you as it steadies your hand and focuses you. She’s eighty percent through rambling off this information when she realizes Tommy has ambled off to talk to someone else. Well. Good for him. She’s the spinster aunt manning the grill, and he’s a strapping young thing who should be getting his kicks mansplaining the same thing she was just saying to a teenage girl who doesn’t care.

She’s on beer three when she takes off steaks and brats and black bean burgers, beer five when chicken breasts and corn cobs are cooked thoroughly.

xxx

A party means so many different things to so many different people.

It’s mutually a letting off of steam. A celebration of life.

But individually…

xxx

Sabrina’s wearing a pleated skirt and a crop top.

Ambrose is wearing cut-off jean shorts and an unbuttoned silk blouse.

Zelda’s wearing a high-necked crepe dress with a lace collar.

Hilda’s wearing pleated slacks, a checked button-up, and an apron that says “Kiss the Cook.”

Hilda also intermittently dons lobster-claw potholders for when she needs to manipulate particularly hot items on the grill.

xxx

The coals are just about dead. Hilda maneuvers her tongs, removes several tin-foil packets: potatoes, sweet potatoes, squash and onions, apples and oats.

She’s six beers in, and the coals are almost over, and she’s so done being the one behind the grill, so done wearing her lobster-claw oven mitts that make her hands sweat however cute and also practical they may be.

xxx

Zelda’s sitting against the trunk of a walnut tree with a plastic cup. Hilda joins her.

Hilda clinks her lukewarm bottle of beer against Zelda’s frosty plastic cup. They both take a drink. Zelda looks at her, looks at her sweating longneck derisively, says,

“That’s why I invested in a margarita bucket.”

xxx

“Zelds.”

They’ve been looking into the distance at the swimming pool Ambrose had summoned and the lithe lank bodies undulating therein, but now they look at each other.

“What?” Zelda says.

“I’ve been busy tonight. But I’ve noticed something,” Hilda says.

“Oh?” Zelda says. “And what might that be?”

“They call me Dad, but they call you Daddy. What’s that supposed to mean?” Hilda says.

Zelda chokes on a mouthful of her frozen margarita.

“I don’t think you really want to know,” Zelda says.

Hilda just catches a few strains of Taylor Swift on the progressively chilling night air, says,

“I asked, didn’t I?”

There is a long pause. Finally Zelda says,

“You are thumbs up emoji. And I am eggplant emoji. As it were.” She takes a long drink.

Hilda gasps, covers her mouth with a flabbergasted hand, breathes,

“No!”

“You asked, didn’t you?” Zelda says.

xxx

Another thing they don’t tell you about drinking beer in the summer is that the faster you drink it—because you must drink it fast for it to remain palatable—the drunker and hornier you get.

Some lessons must be learned the hard way.

xxx

“You do realize eggplant emoji means—” Hilda begins.

Zelda places a hand over Hilda’s, says,

“Yes, well. I need a fresh drink.” 

Zelda’s voice and mannerisms had been uniformly hers, regular. But as she attempts to stand she gives herself away. Beer in summer must be drunk quickly and therefore affects a person accordingly. But tequila is always tequila regardless of temperature, and Zelda stumbles up, is a little more deliberate than usual as she sashays toward the porch. Hilda staggeringly follows.

Zelda’s scooping half-melted margarita into her cup. Hilda says,

“We already put up the protection spell. We could just. Go to bed instead.”

xxx

They’re sloppy. Hilda’s had too many lukewarm beers, and Zelda’s had too many slushy margaritas. Their tongues meet inconsistently, jarringly. 

They make out against the kitchen door, giggle, stumble toward the den.

Hilda’s raised a few hickies on Zelda’s neck; Zelda’s nails have raised a few droplets of blood on Hilda’s hips.

Zelda throws Hilda onto the parlor settee and lunges on top of her.

“Is this the right time to call you Daddy? Or have I read that wrong?” Hilda says.

“You haven’t. But neither of us is any state to talk just now.”

Some lessons must be learned the hard way.


End file.
